Thursday, February 6, 2014

Converting From Atheism but to What?

I have been an Atheist my entire life.  I was raised that way.  Later in life my mother went back to religion and for a long time my father pretended to be Catholic.  My father has gone back to being Atheist.  Even though I knew he was never truly Catholic he tried to get me to become Catholic for a long time.  I think it was to impress his second wife, not sure, she didn't even believe he was Catholic.

Like anyone else I question the world around me and I decided that there is a/are god/gods. I did ask for the some signs and I felt I go them.  I wouldn't say anything miraculous happened but to me it was clear.  Now my issue is that I don't have faith and I don't think I should just pick a religion.  Faith isn't a feeling I understand. I am simply not familiar with having faith.  So I am stuck.

Logically, I live in America where the most common religion is Christianity so that is probably the religion I should pursue but it is very important to get this decision correct.  The other issue I have is that my wife is somewhat Buddhist.  She is not a strong believer but her family is more devout.  She also describe her interactions with Christian people as manipulative and fake.  Apparently, she has had a lot of people in the Chinese community approach her with then intent of converting her and when she didn't reciprocate interest they stopped hanging out with her.  To her it was like they were trying to score brownie points with members of their church by using her.

Then you get to Judaism.  This would be appealing to me because it is really where religion began.  Of the three monotheistic religions this was the first.  Then there's Islam.  The appeal is that the book has never changed, which is the reason behind the existence of the religion.  There is undoubtedly influences of man in both the Torah and the Bible.  Than again there are a lot of contradictory information in the Koran but I don't know how much of this information is bias.  I can also admit because of the probable propaganda I have been subjected to I am biased against being Muslim even thought  I know the least about this religion of the free.

Then there are sects of religions such as Scientology and Latter Day Saints that seem like horse crap to me but I think it important that I remain open to these religions as well.  I have very specific issues with these religions but I don't want to be more insulting that I already I have.   To defend myself a bit I think it important that my audience understands my perspective good and bad.  Please, understand that I do my best to be open minded and I appreciate your patience every time you look past an insulting comment I've made.  I believe that find faith will be a battle and may not be overcome by discussing this with other people.  I simply hope discussion will keep me on a spiritual path to finding specific faith.

At the end of the day I am looking for guidance.  I have tried to be as honest as possible and hope to receive your support in the comment section.

Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Excel: Don't Use Merge and Center

I hate title creators in Excel who use "Merge & Center".  Yeah, I know you can insert columns and rows now but there are still too many issues.  The sad thing is that this is just the lazy man's option.

There is a much better solution to centering your titles.  Simply select the group of cells you would like your title to be and then right click selecting the format cells option.  Click the "Alignment" tab then in the "Horizontal:" drop down box select "Center Across Selection".  If you have a bunch of titles that need to be centered use F4 after you have gone through the process once.  F4 repeats your last action..  You can also use "Paste Special" and select "Formats".

So if you follow these simple step you will no longer annoy me when you design templates and report in Excel.